"footsore and weary" on his way to his aunt, and from which Pickwick
contemplated the castle-ruin, the cathedral, the peaceful Medway. At the
left of the mansion are the carriage-house and the school-room of
Dickens' sons. In another portion of the grounds are his tennis-court
and the bowling-green which he prepared, where he became a skilful and
tireless player. The broad meadow beyond the lawn was a later purchase,
and the many limes which beautify it were rooted by Dickens. Here
numerous cricket-matches were played, and he would watch the players or
keep the score "The whole day long."

It was in this meadow that he rehearsed his readings, and his talking,
laughing, weeping, and gesticulating here "all to himself" excited among
his neighbors suspicion of his insanity. From the front lawn a tunnel
constructed by Dickens passes beneath the highway to "The Wilderness," a
thickly-wooded shrubbery, where magnificent cedars up-rear their
venerable forms and many somber firs, survivors of the forest which erst
covered the countryside, cluster upon the hill top. Here Dickens's
favorite dog, the "Linda" of his letters, lies buried. Amid the leafy
seclusion of this retreat, and upon the very spot where Falstaff was
routed by Hal and Poins ("the eleven men in buckram"), Dickens erected
the chalet sent to him in pieces by Fechter, the upper room of which--up
among the quivering boughs, where "birds and butterflies fly in and out,
and green branches shoot in at the windows"--Dickens lined with mirrors
and used as his study in summer. Of the work produced at Gad's Hill--"A
Tale of Two Cities," "The Uncommercial Traveler," "Our Mutual Friend,"
"The Mystery of Edwin Drood," and many tales and sketches of "All the
Year Round"--much was written in this leaf-environed nook; here the
master wrought through the golden hours of his last day of conscious
life, here he wrote his last paragraph and at the close of that June day
let fall his pen, never to take it up again. From the place of the